A niche blog dedicated to the issues that arise when supplementary protection certificates (SPCs) extend patents beyond their normal life -- and to the respective positions of patent owners, investors, competitors and consumers. The blog also addresses wider issues that may be of interest or use to those involved in the extension of patent rights. You can email The SPC Blog here

Thursday, 11 August 2011

Dorothea von Renesse and Norbert Schwenk (König, Syznka, Tilman, von Renesse, Düsseldorf) have kindly provided their input (here) to The SPC Blog's call for thoughts to Paul Inman's and Herwig von Morze's comments last week on Medeva and the interpretation of EU law.

Dorothea and Norbert's comments are strongly influenced by the German perspective about the meaning of the "subject matter of the patent" and will be published in the September issue of the Mitteilung der deutschen Patentanwälte.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

A sensible analysis. I think the comment that "it is Articles 3(c) and 3(d) of the Regulation which are the key provisions for an unbiased and fair handling of the Regulation - and not Article 3(a)" is spot on.

The sooner that originators realise that they are not going to get the broad interpretation of Art 3(a) that they want without appropriate safeguards also being read into Art 3(c) and 3(d) the better. At present there is a risk that their unrealistic arguments in favour of an interpretation which allows evergreening through later combi-product SPCs will drive the CJEU towards an unworkable and perverse test for Art 3(a).

I agree. The "infringement test" argument has been lost in the national courts of many countries (UK, Spain, Netherlands etc. etc.) and now seems to be falling on deaf ears at the CJ, despite the fact that so many practitioners say it is a simple test that everyone understands. One problem I have always had with it is how to apply it to second medical use claims - how can a "product" (i.e. an active ingredient per se, not the complete medicinal product) infringe a use claim? The same goes for pharmaceutical composition claims and other “applications” of the product in the Article 1(c) sense. The infringement test (if indeed there is only form of it) must be more complicated than its supporters let on.

Katarzyna Zbierska has kindly drawn our attention to this piece which was published in Special IP issue of the Bulletin of her law firm, Koc...

Forthcoming events

1 December 2015: "Competition Law in the Pharma Sector Conference", Brussels. Organised by IBC legal. Click here for further details and registration. You can enjoy a 10% saving by quoting VIP code FKW82593SPCL.